Synthesis and Evaluation of the Research Articles

Review of Research Article

Taylor, M. H & Grossberg, G. T. (2012). The Growing Problem of Illicit Substance Abuse in the Elderly: A Review. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord, 14(4)

Taylor & Grossberg (2012) came up with this comprehensive research article. It relied exclusively on secondary data to come up with retrospective article. In total, 32 research articles that had done the primary research were used to come up with this review. The main strength of this research article is that several articles were used for comparisons purposes hence the information being conveyed has reliability. The weakness of the research article is that it does not indicate the treatment of the main effect but rather it provides a narrative. More so, it did not provide the methodologies used which is important in assessing the validity and dissemination of the findings to the other populations. In connection with geriatric substance abuse, the article does not explain the coverage of its sample and other methodologies. It is therefore important for the methodologies important to bridge this gaps in the feature research articles to make them all round useful.

Review of the Research Methodology

Bogunovic, O. (2012). Substance Abuse in Aging and Elderly Adults. Psychiatric Times

Bogunovic (2012) article on the substance abuse among the aging and elderly adults in the Psychiatric times is informative rather than detailing the component of research methodology and applicability. The strength of the article is its simplicity that can inform a wider audience with less details of the designs, the sampling and the methodology. The absence of methodology makes the research paper to be limited in assessing the reliability of the information, extension of applicability and even the validity. The article need to highlight on the methodology, the confidence level and other research papers that are not consistent with the finding of the other articles. With the shortcoming shown with the article, it is only limited to informing and giving direction. Its importance in topic geriatric substance abuse may be limited to hypothesis setting rather than building literature.

Review of the Paper

Wu, LT & Blazer, D. G. (2013). Substance use disorders and psychiatric comorbidity in mid and later life: a review. International Journal of Epidemiology, 43(2).

Wu & Blazer (2013) research article on Substance use disorders and psychiatric comorbidity in mid and later life has done qualitative. It is an all-round paper with holistic coverage on the methodology, results, discussion and comparison with the previous research that have been done. It makes the determination of reliability and validity easy. More so, it is easy for the findings to be extrapolated on other ongoing research papers such as on Geriatric and Substance abuse. More than 200 citation abstracts were reviewed in the research article making it robust paper on the evidential basis. There is only limitation on sampling techniques where dissemination of the finding may need more hypothesis testing. The paper need to provide more information on the sampling to make it more useful in future in addition to the specific designs that were used.

Review of the Research Paper

Morelli, S. (2015). Substance Abuse among the Elderly: What Works in Treatment. California: California State University.

Morelli (2015) came up with an informative research article on Substance abuse among the Elderly that sought to get the treatment. It is a complete research paper with previous cases that have been researched. It makes comparisons to be made easily. It used 29 researched articles to build a body of knowledge making it concreate. It has brought the aspect of social worker s into the role of minimizing the substance abuse and how problems that comes with age impact geriatric individuals that may lead into drug and substance abuse. The methodology and design are well established where the validity and reliability can be determined. The only limitation is the research was conducted on small scale there it hard to generalize it to the other population. The research applicable to topic Geriatric and Substance abuse because it researched widely on that demographic. The feature areas of concern that need to be amended is widening the scope and scale to make it easily generalized to other populations. More so some of the articles used in the research article are old to the extent of 1962. Research article need to be recent to make the information viable since more revelations are made in science.

Review of the Informative Paper

Foundation, H. B. (2015, May 11). Substance Abuse Among the Elderly.

Foundation (2015) is an article that dissect Substance Abuse Among the Elderly. It is more of an informative paper since it does not provide detailed research components such as methodology, the design and the sampling techniques. It has not provided conceptual definition of the key words hence its applicability can be mistaken. More so, it has cited articles that are not shown at the end. This makes it hard to establish the reliability and validity. More so, it cannot be generalized to other populations since it self it has attempted to generalize the finding of the other research articles. In relation to topic of Geriatric and Substance abuse, the article can only be used to create hypothesis for testing rather than coming up with something concreate. In future articles, the author need to provide the methodologies for its wider usage.

Review of a Qualitative Study

Graeme B. Wilson, E. F. (2013, Aug 7). A Qualitative Study of Alcohol, Health and Identities among UK Adults in Later Life.

Research done by Wilson (2013) used qualitative design on study of alcohol, health and identities among UK adults in later life. Both primary and secondary sources of information were used to collect data. In the research article, 67 articles were used for the literature review and comparisons. The variables impact on each other was not clear. The researcher used structured interview to collect primary information from 24 respondents. The age demographic of the respondents was 50 years and above. However, there is no sampling techniques used to come with the 24 respondents. It is therefore difficult to determine the validity and viability of the research. The respondents used were few making generalization of the result to other population to be erratic. The research also is likely to have confounding factors which limit the validity of the results. Since it is geriatric demographic, the research article is applicable in the topic geriatric substance abuse. The research paper in future need to feature its sampling techniques to understand it can be applied to the other demographics.

Review of the Research Paper about Drugs

Johannessen A, H. A.-S. (2015). Prescribers’ of psychotropic drugs experiences and reflections on use and misuse of alcohol and psychotropic drugs among older people: A qualitative study

Johannessen (2015) came with this research where he established from previous research papers that alcohol and other prescriptive drugs were source of abuse especially on the old age demographic. The research had an aim of establishing the experience of the practitioners when it comes alcohol and drug related abuse among the elderly demographic. Qualitative design in combination with phenomenological-hermeneutical was used where Urban and rural area formed the location of research. Interviews was used to collect information from the respondents. In the research, 34 secondary. However, the sampling technique is not mentioned which limits its application and hard to determine the representability of the finding. In addition, the possibility of generalizing the very finding becomes hard or erroneous. It is a relevant research article since it is within the realms of geriatric demography. The research paper also did not come up with the confounding factors that are likely to affect validity of the research. The future paper should bridge this gaps in order to make them more applicable.

Review of a Qualitative Research

Scott P. Stumbo MA, B. J. (2015, Dec 7). A qualitative analysis of family involvement in prescribed opioid medication monitoring among individuals who have experienced opioid overdoses.

Stumbo (2015) carried out a qualitative research on family involvement in opioid medication monitoring in the individual with experience of overdose. The research used secondary data for literature review and setting the hypothesis. The research also used primary sources to collect information. The respondent that provided information through interview were 87. It is a representative sample and easily generalizable to the other populations. The interviews done were transcribed in verbatim and coded for the analysis. The result indicated that family member played a critical role in monitoring, in connection with geriatric population, the research article may be important in providing the information about the control of drug abuse. The research article limitation is on the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria. It also need to rule out the extraneous factors which have effect on the validity of the results. Its applicability in geriatric substance abuse is limited on monitoring purposes since the variable are those with history of overdose rather than age related.